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"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. " Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1

If this was just a bunch of people being jerks on the internet it wouldn't even be worth a mention. But these jerks are organised in the real world. They've persuaded politicians and authorities that they are the oppressed, vulnerable victims who are always in the right, and anyone who questions their agenda is a "hater".

I do know that a trans-identifying man I have known slightly for many years is prominent on the internet bad-mouthing lesbians who don't want to sleep with him as "transphobes", and that is not a fake or an exaggeration because I know the person involved in real life. In fact I was at the same event as he was last weekend.

We had a thread on that very sort of thing here a couple of years ago and we were assured by our resident left-wingers that we were indeed transphobes for not wanting dick.

Quote:

The stuff about people announcing that their gender is the north wind, or a polar bear, or a week last Tuesday, is relatively harmless nuttery. The stuff where people decide that their "gender" is the opposite of their biological sex and then use that as a lever to gain the privileges of the sex they actually aren't, not so harmless.

Not to mention getting laws passed that criminalises someone deliberately using the wrong pronoun.

Originally Posted by Stout

The problem is sorting out the autogynaephilic sex fetish types from the genuine transsexuals. I have no idea what the ratio is but one thin's for sure, there's enough acceptance of the trans "thing" in society now that there's no denying that actual transsexual people exist and are more than just a fetish.

Yes. Unfortunately the "fad" part of this issue is that since being "oppressed" (not really oppressed, of course; these are some of the more priviledged people in history) is a sort of social standing among people on the hard left, a lot of college idiots who are in the "confused" part of their teen years in terms of sex think that adopting one of those 39 new genders makes them more oppressed and therefore more cool and worthy of attention and special care.

As the proud mother of a trans daughter, this thread disappoints me hugely. She no more chose to be transgender than any of you choose to be cisgender. It's just what she's been all her life, and has finally been able to act on in the past few years. She's an adult, and would have been much happier if she could have started taking androgen-blockers before puberty started, but the view at the time was to do nothing, not even reversible hormone-blocking, until adulthood.

Please try to remember that you're talking about real people, not just cardboard characters and it's extremely painful for some of us listening to your hatred.

Then you didn't pay attention to the thread.

No one said that trans people didn't exist or chose their predicament. But there's a lot of misinformation about gender dysphoria out there, and a lot of college teens pretending to be trans in order to feel like they have some sort of social status, which ends up not helping actual trans people at all.

It is sad that many, many people just hate transgender people and make lots of excuses for that hate. I guess lots of people never mature as they age. I'm disappointed that there are such people in this forum.

Where? Or did you use your mind-reading powers? Because not a single post in this thread prior to yours showed any sort of hate towards trans people.

Just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they're monsters who want to destroy everything you like.

Or, to put it better:

Originally Posted by Tsukasa Buddha

I am currently of the position that the current self-proclaimed transgender movement is a doppelganger that is actually anti-transgender. That is, the "tucutes" and "transtrenders" and their social justice allies who claim biological sex is a social construct and gender identity can be anything at all are interlopers and hijackers whose claims are actually contrary to the needs and experiences of actually transgender people. If biological sex is a social construct, there are no gendered traits, and gender dysphoria is "transmedicalization", then why transition? If we agree gender is a social construct, how then can any self identification be valid, when it is not socially or culturally recognized?

It is funny how I was involved in the LGBT political scene a decade ago, but now I see it as overrun with gibberish. Straight women claiming to be "demisexual genderfluid" somehow became the LGBT vanguard in the social justice ideology lecturing us about "they/them" pronouns. All the Tumblr and Twitter users who can't stand to be boring and normal... God, it's like I've become a conservative ranting about the youth of today.

Where? Or did you use your mind-reading powers? Because not a single post in this thread prior to yours showed any sort of hate towards trans people.

Just because people disagree with you doesn't mean they're monsters who want to destroy everything you like.

Or, to put it better:

Lol

It was when the "gender fluid" thing hit that I finally gave up trying to empathise too hard.

It's a shame really.

Personally don't care as long as it doesn't hurt people.

Edit: my laugh was to your last quote

__________________I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun. With today’s Internet technology we should be able to tell within 72-hours if a potential gun owner has a record.

ETA: I went back and read the thread. Rolfe is right, about everything.

Well, to be fair, she might not be right about non-AGP gender dysphoria, and about what the best course of action would be in which cases. It's hard to say what is "best" in every case, so I don't know.

I don't think I'm right about what the best course of action is with some of the non-AGP presentations. It's a minefield. But real gender dysphoria does exist and there's plenty of living proof that sex reassignment surgery and living as the opposite sex has helped a number of people live happier lives. We can't handwave people like Miranda Yardley (a notable transsexual who is a welcome breath of common sense and down-to-earth talking in all this) away. 10% or more of gender nonconforming children don't desist even after normal puberty.

However, the needs of these people have been appropriated by the much larger numbers of narcissistic autogynaephiles who usurp the genuine vulnerability of these people as support for their own campaign to colonise all female-designated spaces and privileges. This has destabilised a sort of working fudge that was in place where transsexuals were accorded some honorary place in women's spaces on account of being vulnerable, and on account of them not causing trouble.

They (the narcissistic AGPs) are the ones campaigning to have all gatekeeping on changing "sex" removed, and all protections on women's spaces removed because anything that singles them out as being different from actual women enrages them. They even want the word transsexual abolished, much to the fury of the actual transsexuals who identify with the word. What happens now and how best to identify and protect the genuinely vulnerable body dysmorphic people, I really don't know.

A post in that Mumsnet thread encapsulates this rather well. I can't see how to link to an individual post in that forum, but I've done the best screencap I can. The poster is replying to Stephen Whittle, the trans-identifying woman who began the thread without revealing that s/he was one of the most prominent instigators of the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act and a leading proponent of self-ID.

__________________"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012.

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I'd forgotten that one in the midst of the huge amount of material out there - much of it way too deadly serious. This is glorious, and funny. It reminds me a bit of the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets show, which is completely off the wall but there you go.

__________________"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012.

Ah, three years ago. I didn't see the thread at the time. I was still being all supportive of trans rights at that time and I don't know how I'd have posted if I'd participated. Maybe it would have peak transed me then and there, instead of having to wait for the fall-out from the assault on anti-homoeopathy activist Maria MacLachlan (Skepticat) by a trans rights activist late last year. Who knows.

__________________"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012.

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

At first I went "another autogynaephilic man wearing womanface and acting out a fantasy of being an over-sexualised teenage girl, meh." Then I watched a bit more and remembered I'd actually seen it (or something very like it from the same person) before, and it's extremely good.

__________________"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012.

Ah, three years ago. I didn't see the thread at the time. I was still being all supportive of trans rights at that time and I don't know how I'd have posted if I'd participated. Maybe it would have peak transed me then and there, instead of having to wait for the fall-out from the assault on anti-homoeopathy activist Maria MacLachlan (Skepticat) by a trans rights activist late last year. Who knows.

I was myself more supportive of these things back then, but as expected, pushing an issue too far just pushes people in the opposite direction.

I'm not seeing the whole "assured by our resident left-wingers that we were indeed transphobes for not wanting dick." part...

Well part of the discussion was focused on some posters telling us we had "issues" because we wouldn't consider a romantic relationship with a trans person. Because you can't just have tastes about those things, apparently, without being a bigot.

Well part of the discussion was focused on some posters telling us we had "issues" because we wouldn't consider a romantic relationship with a trans person. Because you can't just have tastes about those things, apparently, without being a bigot.

Can you find the post # where someone says that, or something like it?

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts ~ Bertrand Russell

The word for woman is woman. It doesn't need any qualifiers to be entirely clear.

In some contexts, yes it does. This is especially true in discussions like this one, where comparing the groups comes up.

Also, I still can't find a citation for that '90% desist', and the best citations so far in this thread have claimed there isn't enough good data on that specific claim. (I have a strong suspicion that any such study is going to be drastically effected by both definition scope and reporting mechanisms, and thus even well conducted studies might come up with drastically different numbers there.)

__________________Circled nothing is still nothing.
"Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel
Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong

Very supportive of trans people. Also I'm very supportive of tattoos. That being said.

People are treating this as less life changing than a tattoo. I'd expect almost no one to agree that a pre puberty child has enough sense to decide if they should have a tattoo, for obvious reasons. But a much more life changing procedure and suddenly is obviously the child being wise enough and the parents making a smart decision.

I feel the same way I did about the "cool" mom's in high school that went with their kids to the shady parlor in the city and got them inked. And im sure a legion of folks with evanescence and sum 41 tattoos would agree that waiting till they had more sense would have been a good idea.

In some contexts, yes it does. This is especially true in discussions like this one, where comparing the groups comes up.

Also, I still can't find a citation for that '90% desist', and the best citations so far in this thread have claimed there isn't enough good data on that specific claim. (I have a strong suspicion that any such study is going to be drastically effected by both definition scope and reporting mechanisms, and thus even well conducted studies might come up with drastically different numbers there.)

It's a contentious topic inside the trans community as well, with some taking absurd positions such as transitioning is always stuck with and there is no confusions, but that's usually roundly rejected (just less than the 'no such thing as trans' extreme). Even so, I'd never seen 90% claimed even from those arguing against all childhood medical treatments for it (apart from the 'no such thing' people again, but by definition they're not in the community). In that way, it's much as the ADHD issue in that it really doesn't matter if it's being over-diagnosed to if it's a real condition.

Back on the actual topic that has drifted a bit, I'll just throw in that many genders is just as 'right' as two or none. Perhaps one day that stuff will matter less, but right now the way we order society still privileges and values based on that, including for a great many things that it doesn't need to if the justification is supposed to be sexual dimorphism. Hopefully greater recognition of more than two genders leads to less arbitrary limitations. The simple answer to the question is, 'Society, through very complicated interactions.'

__________________Circled nothing is still nothing.
"Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel
Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong

Back on the actual topic that has drifted a bit, I'll just throw in that many genders is just as 'right' as two or none. Perhaps one day that stuff will matter less, but right now the way we order society still privileges and values based on that, including for a great many things that it doesn't need to if the justification is supposed to be sexual dimorphism. Hopefully greater recognition of more than two genders leads to less arbitrary limitations. The simple answer to the question is, 'Society, through very complicated interactions.'

I'm with Noel Plum on this... though I can't remember the exact quote. Binary gender covers an awful lot of people and ground. It's not like "man" means one narrow and restricted thing, or woman does. Those two categories cover almost everybody. The whole 30, 40, 50 gender thing is like categorising edibles as food, drink and 50 different types of yogurt.

I don't follow? Sex physically exists. Gender is an identification, which doesn't have a real existence, per se. It's an abstract description.

Exactly it needs to give your current reproductive status on your drivers license. If you are some sterile freak you need to be easily identified as such. It is the only way to be biologically accurate after all. So women stop being women at menopause, men stop being men if they get a vasectomy and so on.

Other wise you get into weird situations where "well you look kind of like a man so we will class you as a man" no you must be fully functional to count as your biologically indicated sex. Everyone else gets lumped into sexless sterile freak.

I apologize if I missed something in this thread, but the vast majority of the time I see people complain about "Oh my gosh, why 39 genders" I see far more alarm at the number and not much thoughtful analysis of what is actually in such a list and how it might be used.

You'll notice that the vast majority of them aren't really distinct genders but different ways of talking about essentially a much smaller set of things. For instance, the list includes Cis, Cisgender, Cis Male, Cis Man, Cisgender Man, and Cisgender Male. That's six labels, but we're not by any stretch talking about six "genders".

Lists on Tinder or any other "Omigosh why so many genders!" are pretty much the same.

These labels represent different ways people may chose to talk about their gender identity. So back to the original question, who choses how many of these labels exist? In the case above, Facebook chooses, just like any other company chooses the option for their users.

__________________The weakness of all Utopias is this, ... They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motorcar or balloon.
-G.K. CHESTERTON

I'm with Noel Plum on this... though I can't remember the exact quote. Binary gender covers an awful lot of people and ground. It's not like "man" means one narrow and restricted thing, or woman does. Those two categories cover almost everybody. The whole 30, 40, 50 gender thing is like categorising edibles as food, drink and 50 different types of yogurt.

Right. As someone else said earlier, the logical end-point if we want to hyper-categorize is to give each person their own gender (hint: it's their name or SSN or something like that).

When 2 labels accurately describe 99% of the population, then it's a pretty good classification system. We're talking about billions of people, after all.

Biological models in general have a grey area (species is the most common example).

I don't know why I'm perennially surprised by the sheer number of right-on lefty dudebros, as well as straight-up right-wing misogynists, who pile into these discussions mansplaining to women what it is to be a woman, and sporting their woke credentials by telling women they have to budge up and make room for men in dresses because they sure as hell won't make a safe space in men's designated accommodation for them. Men support other men in their desire to oppress women. There's actually nothing surprising about this at all.

"right-wing misogynists" demand that transfolk have to be accommodated in female spaces? That's news to me.

Also I can't help but get a very negative vibe from your post. Men support other men in their desire to oppress women? What planet are you on?

You seem to be trying to claim a complex issue as a misogynistic attack on your sex.

In general, I don't like how this topic of shared washrooms etc. is framed as "creepy men will predate on women" as if
1) the coreverse isn't also true
2) that this is a considerable risk in general or even in particular to this group of people

When 2 labels accurately describe 99% of the population, then it's a pretty good classification system. .

Over 99%, in fact. And the thing is, what they don't describe aren't supplementary genders but genetic 'defects' that make identification difficult. If you mash together a Toyota and a Peugeot, it doesn't make it a new brand.

In general, I don't like how this topic of shared washrooms etc. is framed as "creepy men will predate on women" as if
1) the coreverse isn't also true
2) that this is a considerable risk in general or even in particular to this group of people

Oh come on it's perfectly logical.

1. A straight man not wanting to shower, change, use bathroom with a gay man is obviously homophobic.
2. A straight man not wanting to shower, change, use bathroom with a trans man is obviously transphobic.
3. A straight woman not wanting to shower, change, use bathroom with a straight man is perfectly okay.

__________________"Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part." - Detective Sommerset, Se7en

I'm with Noel Plum on this... though I can't remember the exact quote. Binary gender covers an awful lot of people and ground. It's not like "man" means one narrow and restricted thing, or woman does. Those two categories cover almost everybody. The whole 30, 40, 50 gender thing is like categorising edibles as food, drink and 50 different types of yogurt.

I kind of agree, but it seems like a lot of this is talking past each other. Different situations demand different levels of specificity. In that way, Rolfe is right that a woman is a woman. Trans woman, cis woman, MTF, male to female...they are all women. They're all the same gender. (As Cavemonster rightfully points out, basically ever list of 'OMG look at all these genders!' are lists of terms describing gender and padded with things that are not gender.)

However, in some situations that information is useful. Dating sites have good reason to have many choices for 'gender' even though they aren't all actually different genders. Doctors generally need to know sex, not gender. Discussions where large parts of society don't believe trans people are the gender they are...then the vocabulary is useful. (Also, it isn't really here nor there if it works 90+ or even 99% of the time. Having words to describe when it doesn't work isn't invalidated by times when it does.)

The yogurt thing is probably unintentionally accurate (I don't know how that person was using it). Is it a food or drink? Well, to know that you would actually have to know what kind of yogurt you're talking about. When you have people making laws that you can't put yogurt in public coolers for drinks, nor for food, then it's not just useful, but essential to have language for it.

__________________Circled nothing is still nothing.
"Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel
Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong

I kind of agree, but it seems like a lot of this is talking past each other.

The problem when you "talk past" someone in certain situations that gets you branded a hateful cislord bigot.

I've literally had people; otherwise nice smart reasonable people, say that "misgendering someone" is pretty much on the same level as a slur and my entire Facebook feed has been awash in the last week with the report that not using a person's preferred pronoun is a leading cause of suicide.

So yeah... can't win, can't lose, can't quit the game.

__________________"Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part." - Detective Sommerset, Se7en

The problem when you "talk past" someone in certain situations that gets you branded a hateful cislord bigot.

I've literally had people; otherwise nice smart reasonable people, say that "misgendering someone" is pretty much on the same level as a slur and my entire Facebook feed has been awash in the last week with the report that not using a person's preferred pronoun is a leading cause of suicide.

So yeah... can't win, can't lose, can't quit the game.

It's that way all around. What you say happens, almost always from some over zealous ally making it more about their virtue than the groups they're supporting. It also happens that someone mistakenly concludes malice or excessive negligence when a simple slip of the tongue or other misunderstanding is the issue. It also happens that someone actually is a hateful bigot hides behind those cases. Or a correction or criticism of an argument makes something believe they're being called a bigot, or that the criticism was for something it entirely was not (such as 'not wanting the dick').

I'm paraphrasing but it reminds me of the time I was complaining about being called racist because I objected to direct monetary reparations for slavery, and some rando piped up with something along the lines of, 'yeah, and they called be a racist for calling my sister's boyfriend a (n-word)'. (I can't actually remember rando's transgression, but it was stupidly racist.)

Guess we'll have to take such accusations on their own merits the hard way.

__________________Circled nothing is still nothing.
"Nothing will stop the U.S. from being a world leader, not even a handful of adults who want their kids to take science lessons from a book that mentions unicorns six times." -UNLoVedRebel
Mumpsimus: a stubborn person who insists on making an error in spite of being shown that it is wrong

Well unfortunately this is 2018 on the internet and we can't just pretend that the entire goal isn't to just lump anyone who disagrees with you into some "evil" category you can then use to dismiss them.

"Well we'll just have to discuss this without rampant tribalism dictating every aspects of the discussion" is like saying "Well discuss it without the tide coming it." Okay it's a nice idea but it's pointless because it ain't gonna happen.

__________________"Ernest Hemingway once wrote that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. I agree with the second part." - Detective Sommerset, Se7en

Exactly it needs to give your current reproductive status on your drivers license. If you are some sterile freak you need to be easily identified as such. It is the only way to be biologically accurate after all. So women stop being women at menopause, men stop being men if they get a vasectomy and so on.

Other wise you get into weird situations where "well you look kind of like a man so we will class you as a man" no you must be fully functional to count as your biologically indicated sex. Everyone else gets lumped into sexless sterile freak.

It's that way all around. What you say happens, almost always from some over zealous ally making it more about their virtue than the groups they're supporting.

Indeed. I honestly think this behavior can only be corrected by fellow allies. It's a problem for and of the ally community, within the ally community, and so the onus is also on us to fix it, even if we as individuals didn't cause the problem.

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts ~ Bertrand Russell

Well unfortunately this is 2018 on the internet and we can't just pretend that the entire goal isn't to just lump anyone who disagrees with you into some "evil" category you can then use to dismiss them.

Who just did that? Tyr just said it was people:

Quote:

making it more about their virtue than the groups they're supporting

That's the opposite of being in or feigning denial about the nature of the beast.

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts ~ Bertrand Russell

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